In prep for the last episode tonight I watched season 2 back to back for the past few days after recording it from Channel 5, and whoever was watching it by the Box Set (Johnyhumf?) has the right idea. In general the show is addictive and you want the next episode without waiting a week for it, but season 1 was short enough to stand six weeks' wait for that excellent payoff. Season 2, I'm not surprised Dave got bored by the farm setting but once I sat and chained out the show in one block there were some great highlights even for just the dialogue;

When Andrea becomes Ripley after learning to shoot and they fight their way back to their car

and also the general arguments and power struggles between Shane and Rick, Shane and Dale, and Dale and the rest of the group in general, with only Darryl seeing that the divisions spell disaster. The other upside is that the show has gone "The Full Romero"; some night-time scenes reference Survival of The Dead's Western Influences and there was was also

Now people dying without being bitten are coming back as in Romero's films, and although I haven't watched it yet, the overrunning of a farm is a tenuous link all the way back to Night of The Living Dead

came up again as a plotline but instead of it actually happening, which would've been a better kick in the guts dramatically, there was just a bunch of soap opera talk.

So despite the first seven episodes turning into an arc, I still liked series 2 on the whole, but the trailer for series 3 crosses over the last of the comics I read so I'm happy it won't be on Freeview until next May, that will give me time to catch up with the novels and comics. If I get the compendiums then I'd have to move on to the normal small collections to take in issue 100 onwards, but there's no rush, the Governor novel will do for now.

It's ordered along with the Governor novel. Considering they did up to 13 variant covers for the anniversary and gave at least one away on Todd MacFarlane's, and it sold nearly 400,000 copies at least it's over with and I don't have to spend any more time trying to avoid the spoilers for a nine year old series. Once I've got the compendiums, if I don't want to wait for the week before Xmas when Collection 17 is released, then 97-99 and 101 will all be there on Ebay.

Just have to fight the urge to go to the Wiki and read everything up just to get it over with, like I do with Marvel and DC comics now I no longer read those.

[EDIT] Aha, you can only pre-order the second compendium, they won't release it in the UK before mid-October when series 3 starts on FX. Still! That's money saved until then.

showing the audience that the big packs are attracted by big sounds like helicopters, but the characters haven't learned this yet

and so now I can wait for s3, which will be 16 episodes, that's the good news, the bad news is, they might do a season break which would make zero sense for a cable show unless they hadn't finished shooting all 16 by October.

The helicopter was the same one Rick saw in the first series, wasn't it, but no-one believed him? The zombies seemed to be eating his horse, so assume it was from the same time. I took that segment to be showing how the same group has hounded the survivors since the beginning - were they also the herd that attacked them on the highway in series 2? The heli also tied up nicely with the end of series 2, as I assume it would have originated from that base you get a glimpse of right at the end?

Yeah the wait is a pain but that's all about hooking people in to Sky so they can watch it on FX. I'm more pissed off that the region 2 Box set for series 1 was self-censored by AMC but following complaints, Season 2 was uncut and the same as the American versions as far as I know, pushing it up to 18. The wait is bad enough without them doing an Indiana Jones and still not giving us the uncut versions without importing them, so there's just no reason to buy s1 even if it's just about a tenner.